Definition
In law, personality has two distinct technical meanings, both rooted in the distinction between things pertaining to persons and things pertaining to property or place.
1. Personality of laws (conflict of laws). The quality of a law or statute that makes it operate upon persons — their condition, status, or legal capacity — rather than upon land or property situated within a territory. A law possessing "personality" follows the person across jurisdictions; it attaches to who someone is, not where they or their property happen to be located. This concept is a cornerstone of private international law and conflict-of-laws analysis, distinguishing personal statutes (governing capacity to contract, marriage, minority, domicile) from real statutes (governing land and immovable property within a territory).
2. Personality in procedural law (historical). An action is said to be brought "in personality" when it is directed against the correct party — the person against whom the action properly lies. This usage is largely obsolete in modern practice but appears in early common-law pleading texts.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The set of psychological and social qualities that make a person distinct from others; also colloquially, charisma or a celebrity with a strong public presence.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "That which constitutes distinction of person; individuality." Also, remarks of a personal or disparaging nature directed at an individual.
Both the modern and historical common definitions center on individual human character — what makes a person who they are in a psychological or social sense. The legal meaning inverts this focus: it is not about the content of a person's character at all, but about whether a law or legal rule travels with persons (as opposed to attaching to land or territory). A researcher encountering "personality" in a conflict-of-laws treatise should resist any instinct to read it as referring to human individuality or temperament.
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Common Confusion
PERSONALITY vs. PERSONALTY. These are distinct terms that historical sources and even some careful legal writers have conflated. Personalty (also spelled "personalty") means personal property — chattels, movables, things not fixed to land. Personality means the quality of a law that concerns the person. Story himself flagged this confusion directly, preferring "personality" over alternatives but acknowledging the risk, since "personalty" in Anglo-American law was already occupied by the personal-property sense. Rapalje & Lawrence notes that Livermore used "personality" and "reality" while Henry used "personalty" and "realty" — the terminological inconsistency across treatises is real and can mislead a researcher scanning historical conflict-of-laws sources. When reading 18th- or 19th-century private international law texts, always confirm from context whether the author means the doctrine of personal statutes or is referring to movable property.
PERSONALITY vs. LEGAL PERSONALITY. Legal personality (or juridical personality) is a separate concept: the capacity of an entity — human or corporate — to hold rights and bear obligations in law. A corporation has legal personality; a trust may or may not depending on jurisdiction. This entry does not cover legal personality. See the related terms below.
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Why It Matters in Research
The conflict-of-laws sense of personality is the primary meaning researchers will encounter in the Law Mind corpus, and it is densely embedded in 18th- and 19th-century private international law materials — Story's Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, Huber, Savigny, Wharton's treatise. The concept originated in the medieval European distinction between personal statutes and real statutes, and the terminology migrated into Anglo-American legal writing unevenly. This creates three specific research traps:
First, terminological drift. As Rapalje & Lawrence documents, different authors used different words for the same concept. "Personality of laws," "personal statutes," and "personal laws" are used interchangeably across sources. A full-text search on any single term will miss significant portions of the corpus.
Second, the personalty/personality false match. Database searches for "personality" will surface passages about personal property (personalty) and vice versa, particularly in older typeset materials where the distinction between the two words may be unclear or where OCR errors collapse the distinction. Cross-check surrounding context before relying on a passage.
Third, the modern absence. Contemporary American and English conflict-of-laws scholarship rarely uses "personality of laws" as a term of art. Modern sources instead speak of choice-of-law rules, domicile-based analysis, or the governmental interest approach. If a researcher finds the term in a 20th- or 21st-century source, it is almost certainly in a comparative or historical discussion, or in a civil-law-influenced jurisdiction's materials.
The procedural sense — an action brought "in personality" against the right party — appears in early English pleading texts and Year Books. It is unlikely to appear in American sources after the mid-19th century and can generally be treated as a historical artifact requiring no further doctrinal pursuit.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in agreement on the core conflict-of-laws definition, all tracing to the same authority: Story's Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, § 16. Black's (both editions) and Burrill quote Story nearly verbatim. Bouvier adds the procedural gloss — "an action in personality is one brought against the right person" — citing Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, a 16th-century English pleading manual. Rapalje & Lawrence is the most historically transparent of the five, explicitly surfacing the terminological dispute between Livermore and Henry and crediting Story's preference for "personality" as the least misleading choice given that "personalty" was already in use for personal property.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the doctrinal substance behind the term — the actual framework for determining which laws are "personal" versus "real," how domicile operates as the connecting factor, and how the concept evolved through Huber's comity theory into 19th-century American conflict-of-laws analysis. These dictionaries define the word but do not teach the doctrine. Researchers needing the doctrine must go to Story directly, or to Wharton's treatise on the conflict of laws, which Rapalje & Lawrence itself cross-references.
None of the five source dictionaries addresses legal personality in the sense of juridical capacity — that concept, though related in etymology, developed as a separate term of art and is absent from these entries.
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Jurisdictional Note
The personality/reality distinction in conflict of laws is more deeply embedded in civil-law systems (French, Dutch, Louisiana, Quebec) than in common-law systems. Civil-law jurisdictions historically gave broader effect to personal statutes following the person across borders. Common-law courts developed parallel but doctrinally distinct approaches through domicile and comity. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or with 19th-century European private international law materials will encounter the terminology more frequently and with greater doctrinal weight than in materials from other American states.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Personal Property — Intellectual Property as Personal Property (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia) [for the distinction between personal and real property that underlies the personality/reality framework in conflict of laws]
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